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Originally Posted by BuddyBoy
I agree that marginal retail costs for ebook are significantly less than pbooks if only in storage and retail space. The problem is that, for now, because the market size is slight, the amortized fixed costs are much higher on the per item basis. Ebook stores sell fewer copies than pbook stores. Granted, they could lower the price and hope to make it up on volume, but the current total market size versus the total purchasing market size would have to be a great deal larger to recoup the loss.
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*Sigh*
Author writes book (probably on a word processor). Provides file to publisher. Publisher clicks twice and - viola - eBook.
Where's the "amortized fixed costs" for an eBook?
If the publisher wants to set up their own eBook store, then that is their decision based on whether or not they think they can make money. It's like McDonalds saying "we are going to charge double for a hamburger for the next year cuz we need money to build a new restaurant."
But those costs are avoidable since they can rent someone else's infrastructure. They do so today at places like eReader, but the prices that they charge for the eBook is more than the price of the hardcover paper version.
There's no excuse for that.
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Originally Posted by BuddyBoy
One of the downsides of ebooks is that, unlike pbooks where unsold copies are "remaindered in place" - i.e. sold for a fraction of their list price in order to save the cost of shipping them back - it's actually more expensive it terms of time and labour to reduce the price of an existing ebook. And since there is no anticipated savings on shipping or remaindered copies, there's little incentive to decrease the price.
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I'm sorry, but are we in the same reality?
There is no such thing as an "unsold copy" of an eBook. Copies are made as people buy them - for almost no cost. Reducing the price of an eBook is as simple as going in to the web interface to the database and changing the price.